Happy Monday! I hope you’re having a great 2024 so far, I can’t believe it’s March already?! What?!

Today’s photo is of a subalpine green cicada, just hanging out on an echinacea flower.

Subalpine green cicadas, which is a species of cicada that is endemic to New Zealand, and found in both the North (Taranaki, Taupo, Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, Rangitikei and Wellington) and South (Marlborough Sounds, Nelson, Kaikoura, Buller, Westland, Mid Canterbury, South Canterbury, Mackenzie, Otago Lakes, Dunedin, Fiordland and Stewart Island) Islands.

We seem to have an abundance of them in my garden. Multiple sightings and you can hear a few of them chirping at the same time. Pretty cool.

There’s some excellent up close photos taken by Phil Bendle here.

And you can check out their profile on iNaturalist here.

While googling cicadas I learnt some interesting facts about their singing,

Male cicadas sing to enchant the female cicadas. Each species has its own sound that is only attractive to females of the same species.

Larger species are capable of singing in excess of 120 decibels. Ouch. Smaller species sing so high pitched that it cannot be heard by the human ear but makes dogs howl in pain.

“The apparatus used by cicadas for singing is complex. The organs that produce sound are called tymbals. Tymbals are a pair of ribbed membranes at the base of the abdomen. The cicada sings by contracting the internal tymbal muscles. This causes the membranes to buckle inward, producing a distinct sound. When these muscles relax, the tymbals pop back to their original position. Scientists still don’t fully understand how this apparatus produces such extreme volume.” Check out Howstuffworks for the rest of this interesting article.

I also found that in mythology, “Cicadas were once humans who, in ancient times, allowed the first Muses to enchant them into singing and dancing for so long they stopped eating and sleeping and died without noticing. The Muses rewarded them with the gift of never needing food or sleep, and of singing from birth to death.”

Echinacea (Purple Coneflower) is one of my favourite (non rose) flower at the moment, it’s the first time I’ve grown them (from seed) and they just look amazing. I swear just about every time I walk past the patch of them in the garden there is some sort of insect (or multiple) just hanging out on the flowers.

I definitely recommend you make some space for them in your garden.

Many thanks for visiting. Have an amazing week. 🙂